Cedar Creek Ecosystem Science Reserve, z.umn.edu/cced Fall 2016 Field Notes Cedar Creek s Education and Outreach Newsletter Contents Wildlife tracking project... 1 Coordinator s Corner... 2 Summer intern highlights... 2 Grad Student Spotlight... 2 Red-headed woodpeckers... 3 Caught on Camera!... 4 Upcoming events... 5 New next month: Featured Research Project: Dimensions of Biodiversity Tracking wildlife at Cedar Creek Cedar Creek Ecosystem Science Reserve's newest citizen science project, the Cedar Creek Wildlife Survey, got off to a great start this summer with a rainy day of training and a gorgeous sunny day of tracking here onsite! As a diverse team of citizen scientists from the community, summer volunteers from a local national wildlife refuge, trained wildlife trackers from the Twin Cities, and CCESR staff, we went out on August 7th and surveyed about 7 miles of sand road for animal track and sign. After just a few hours of work, we managed to document the presence of 13 different animal species and reconstruct some fascinating stories about animal movement, decision-making, and behavior! It was an amazing and empowering experience to be able to apply the training we had gotten in the rain a few weeks prior and, over the course of the survey day, to use it to tell the difference between red and gray squirrel tracks, between turkey and sandhill crane tracks, and even to identify and understand the signs of a mole crossing the road - above ground! Many thanks to Jon, Donnie, Kirsten and Rob from the MN Wildlife Tracking Project for the expert instruction on July 23rd, as well as teaching and sharing during our survey day! The Cedar Creek Wildlife Survey project has also been getting some positive press! A story about the parallels between the project and Pokémon Go was recently highlighted on the US Long Term Ecological Research network's website, facebook and twitter account, we were mentioned in several local newspapers and on the U of M's College of Biological Sciences site, and were even featured on the KSTP local news webpage! We hope that these write-ups lead to more members joining the project to help collect valuable data on animal presence, abundance and diversity. Plus, it's fun! There will be another training opportunity, this time at Ft. Snelling State Park (hosted by the MN Wildlife Tracking Project) on October 15th and 16th. Please contact Caitlin (caitlin@umn.edu) or Jon (poppele@umn.edu) for more information or to RSVP! We'd love to have you join the team! photo by C. Potter 1
Field Notes, Fall 2016 Coordinator s Corner Curabitur Wow! It's hard to believe varius that it's September already! Summer at Cedar lobortis Creek ESR flew by lectus, in a rush of intern projects, outreach events, and new quis pharetra eros partnerships. Where did the time go? dictum sit amet non volutpat An exciting part of this summer for me has been the opportunity to really engage with the local community. I've Sed non nulla tellus, tristique ultrices gotten to meet many of you at summer leo. Aliquam eu ligula mi, eget congue outreach events, at East Bethel Booster turpis. Aliquam consectetur, nisl quis Days, and on the trail at Fish Lake, as well interdum vulputate, felis enim semper as working with you through the Cedar mi, id gravida erat orci id justo. Morbi Creek Wildlife Survey (p. 1) and the Redheaded Woodpecker Recovery Project (p. consectetur ultrices arcu, a aliquet diam blandit ac. Integer sodales, neque 3). (On a side note, this was a spectacular non ultricies consequat, felis lectus year for the red-headed woodpeckers, bibendum ante, in tempor tortor justo with over 100 adults nesting and 70+ hendrerit magna. offspring fledged! If it's not too hot, you still have a great chance of seeing Pellentesque venenatis arcu felis. them from the Fish Lake Nature Trail - or Vestibulum nulla tellus, consectetur join the woodpecker team for a hike in facilisis nec, tempor vitae est. Proin on Sept. 10th!) The greater Cedar Creek scelerisque felis commodo quam community is a wonderful group of scelerisque consectetur sit amet a people who are enthusiastic and curious nulla. Nulla quis tortor quis ante viverra about the world around them. I'm so vestibulum. Suspendisse sit amet excited to be a part of it with all of you! nulla arcu. Phasellus adipiscing arcu a purus consectetur tempor. Vestibulum Now that it's fall, Education and fermentum felis sed nisl pharetra at Outreach here at CCESR will shift into faucibus mauris eleifend. Praesent full field trip mode. We've got more than sollicitudin metus non nulla faucibus 2200 students scheduled to visit on field vestibulum. Suspendisse ut lacus trips in September and October! In the elit. Donec consectetur ullamcorper midst of all that, we'll still be hosting eleifend. Aenean tincidunt nunc ac outreach events, including a fall open turpis interdum quis consectetur velit house on October 1st and a variety of dapibus. guided hikes and programs (see page 5, our website or our facebook page for Vivamus viverra velit id nisi dictum details!) Hope to see you here soon! mollis. Morbi lectus ipsum, eleifend non hendrerit sit amet, condimentum As always, please get in touch with et nisi. Maecenas vel tellus nulla, eu questions or if there's a particular euismod dui. Quisque sapien sapien, program you'd like to see at Cedar Creek! iaculis non blandit vitae, adipiscing in urna. Vivamus sed nulla vel nisl vehicula Sincerely, sollicitudin non eget augue. Nunc Dr. Caitlin Barale Potter 612-301-2602, caitlin@umn.edu 2 Just Another Newsletter Title A summer of science...and more We have just wrapped up a very busy and productive summer of science, made possible in large part by our dedicated and hardworking crew of undergraduate interns. These students came to Cedar Creek from all over the state and the country, and spent their summer weeding, clipping, measuring, weighing, sorting and identifying plants in our many longterm experiment plots. As a judge at the 2016 Intern Olympics, I can assure you that they are incredible - not only can they identify all sorts of native plants by both Latin and common names, but they can also sprint while carrying canoes, write clever ecological song parodies, and eat more popsicles than seems humanly possible. It's very impressive! A subset of our interns also spent time this summer doing independent research projects on topics ranging from owl migration, nitrogen addition, and groundwater, to spectral imaging, nematodes and rates of bark peeling. Their projects highlight the range of things to study here at Cedar Creek, and provide an inspirational glimpse into many unanswered questions in ecology. We are always on the lookout for new interns, so if a college student or recent grad in your life is interested for next summer, let us know - applications open in the winter for summer 2017 positions. Grad Student Spotlight: Jake Grossman (Jake is a Ph.D student in EEB, working in Jeannine Cavender-Bares' lab) Are all forests created equal? This question motivates my research on whether biodiversity affects the way that energy and nutrients move through forests. Based on past work in grasslands conducted at Cedar Creek, many of us suspect that a forest consisting of only one or two species of tree may be less productive and less healthy than a diverse forest. And certain species of trees may contribute to forest health in a way that can't be replaced when that species is gone. photo by C. Potter We could go out and measure natural forests, but this approach could be misleading if, for instance, more diverse forests are found on better soils or further from human settlements. In order to compare apples to apples, we planted a 9,000-tree forest diversity experiment, called Forests and Diversity (FAB). We planted trees of twelve native species - oaks, pines, maples, basswood, juniper, and birch - just a half-meter apart from each other in a giant grid. (continued on page 3) C l q d n
Is Mom or Dad feeding the kids? by Keith Olstad and Chet Meyers For the last 8 years, volunteer citizen scientists from the Redheaded Woodpecker Recovery Project (RWRP) have monitored this Coordinator s Corner Curabitur Creek ESR: learning varius what these lobortis lectus, quis special pharetra authorization, the eros project dictum sit amet the resident birds! non volutpat beautiful bird s population at Cedar amazing birds eat, where they nest, and how they raise their young. With has even been able to band many of Early this summer, RHWP members had a new mission: to find out if trained volunteers could answer questions about basic woodpecker biology using only observations, or whether they needed more sophisticated technology to get complete and accurate data. To answer this question, volunteers observed red-headed woodpecker Grad Student Spotlight (continued from page 2) Some parts of the Forests and Biodiveristy experiment consist of all one species of tree, like a pine plantation. Other parts are more diverse. For going on three years, we've measure how much they've grown, how vulnerable they are to insect attacks, and how quickly their leaves decompose after dropping off in the fall. We expected that more diverse parts of FAB will produce more wood, suffer less insect photo by S. St. Clair parents at nests with hatchlings using only binoculars. They recorded how often parents visited the nest, whether the birds were male or female, whether they brought food to the nest and whether they carried fecal sacs out of the nest. The results from this pilot project confirm conclusively that we don t yet know the answer! In the course of 8 hours of observations by four damage, and produce leaves that decompose faster than less diverse parts of the experiment. So far, a given tree in a more diverse forest neighborhood grows faster than it would when surrounded by members of its own species. And preliminary evidence suggests that, for some species, being surrounded by diverse neighbors actually increases insect attacks, although we are still teasing this story apart. It's too early to tell whether there are differences in leaf decomposition, although pine needles by themselves certainly do not decompose quickly, as many homeowners know! Why does this matter? If you've been up North recently, you've seen that paper birches are in decline across Field Notes, Fall 2016 observers, woodpecker parents were visited their nests 107 times, but for 15 of those visits (14%) the observer coud not establish the bird's identity. Many factors could either improve or complicate this percentage. So the RHWP, a project of the Audubon Chapter of Minneapolis, is exploring further training of volunteers and possible technologies to give us the answers we seek. We want to know more about how woodpecker parents interact with each other and their young and what foods are most critical to hatchling development. If you'd like to get involved with this citizen science project, you're invited to join the RWRP's monthly meeting on the 3rd Wednesday of each month at 7:00pm in the Community Room at the Lunds & Byerlys Market, 3945 West 50th Street, Edina MN. You can also contact Chet Meyers (chetmeyers@ visi.com) or Keith Olstad (klbolstad@ comcast.net) with questions. a variety of environments. This is probably happening for a variety of reasons, including climate change, pest populations, and natural cycles in the population. But our research may begin to tell us how Minnesota forests will change as birch trees become less common, especially if they aren't replaced by other species, leading to a drop in forest biodiversity. The early days of FAB, back in 2013 3
Field Notes, Fall 2016 The Heckenlaible kids birding at the CCESR open house. photo by E. Murdock photo by S. St. Clair photo by D. Heckenlaible Caught on Camera! Dimensions of Biodiversity team hard at work in the field. Treefrog hanging out near the intern dorms. What have you seen on your own adventures? If you take a picture on the Fish Lake Nature Trails or at one of our events and would like to see it featured in Caught on Camera!, send the image and a brief caption to Caitlin at caitlin@umn.edu. photo by A. Kovaik photo by E. Mudock Male Eastern towhee bringing food to the nest. The Kovariks look at moths during the Nocturnal Entomology program. Researcher Raincoat Rainbow at the (rainy) annual Cedar Creek Scientist Field Day. photo by S. Webster REU student Amanda Donaldson lays out a plot in her summer study of plant water use along Cedar Creek's riparian zone. photo by S. Barrott 4 Summer sunset at Cedar Bog Lake 4 Follow us on Facebook and Twitter by searching for @CedarCreekESR
Cedar Creek Ecosystem Science Reserve, z.umn.edu/cced Upcoming Events 9/10: Red-headed woodpecker hike. Citizen scientists from the Red-headed Woodpecker Recovery Project will be on hand to lead guided tours of the oak savanna area where our woodpeckers live. Bring your binoculars and good walking shoes and meet at the Fish Lake parking lot! (free, families welcome!) 9/27: Guided evening walk. Join experienced naturalist and longtime Cedar Creeker Barb Delaney for a look at the geology, ecology, and natural history of CCESR over time. This program involves walking and is targeted at adults with interests in natural history, flora and fauna, and interpretive education. LIMIT 20; PLEASE RSVP (free, adults only) 10/1: Celebrate fall at Cedar Creek! Throughout the day, naturalists and CCESR staff will be on hand to lead nature hikes to Cedar Bog Lake, do fall-themed activities, talk about on-going research, and more. Come enjoy the fall colors in the forest and the swamp! (free, families welcome!) 10/15-16: Cedar Creek Wildlife Survey training. (at Ft. Snelling State Park) Learn how to track wildlife in this 2-day tracking intensive offered by the MN Wildife Tracking Project. Training qualifies you to join the Cedar Creek Wildlife Survey citizen science project. RSVP REQUIRED. (free, ages 8+ with parent) 10/22: Cedar Creek Wildlife Survey day. Join trained and novice wildlife trackers to collect data for our new citizen science project (attendance at training event mandatory unless otherwise approved) 11/12: Build your own environmental sensor. Under the expert guidance of Tommy Rodengen, build your own temperature and humidity sensor to take home! $30 workshop fee covers materials to build one sensor could be built individually or in a team of two. LIMIT 20; PLEASE RSVP. ($30; ages 8+ with parent chaperone) Let us know if you can attend by contacting Caitlin at caitlin@umn.edu or 612-301-2602! All events take place at Cedar Creek s Lindeman Discovery and Research Center at 2660 Fawn Lake Dr NE in East Bethel, unless otherwise noted. Detailed information on events can be found at z.umn.edu/cced 5